REVIEW: Joanne Clifton’s Flashdance hits Chesterfield

Rebecca Havercroft

The film that launched a million leg-warmers hit Chesterfield this week with Strictly’s Joanne Clifton taking on the famous off-the-shoulder look for Flashdance The Musical.

The original 1983 movie was a smash hit - telling that familiar, everyday, tale of a young female steel worker who yearns to be professional dancer.

Joanne Clifton in Flashdance

There was never going to be any doubt that Joanne Clifton - world champion ballroom dancer and fan favourite from TV’s Strictly Come Dancing - would be able to handle the dance scenes required of her when she took to the stage as Alex Owens at Chesterfield’s Winding Wheel for opening night on Wednesday.

But this is a musical and the big question is how well she could handle the vocal duties - being outstanding in one field of the performing arts does not automatically mean you’ll excel at them all, as Piers Brosnan clearly proved in Mama Mia. But all concerns were banished on her first number, which revealed she has a fantastic voice with a pop sensibility perfectly well-suited to the 80s-rooted soundtrack.

She’s paired with Ben Adams, teen heart-throb from the band A1 and there’s clear chemistry between them, with sparks flying not just from the steel mill machinery.

The clever, pared-back set offered the ideal backdrop against which Alex’s story could unfold, even allowing her to get a drenching on-stage at the end of the first act.

The live band kept the beat going and inevitably the feel-good factor won over the audience, who were on their feet and dancing along by the end of the show.

A fantastic night’s entertainment that will have you singing What A Feeling all the way back to the car park.

Flashdance The Musical runs at Chesterfield’s Winding Wheel from November 8 to 11.